ReviewPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2024
Agentic processes in cultural evolution: relevance to Anthropocene sustainability.
Review in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed.
- Not evolved to save the planet, yet capable to promote pro-environmental action leveraging human nature.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Review
- Continuities and discontinuities in the cultural evolution of global consciousness.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Evolution of the polycrisis: Anthropocene traps that challenge global sustainability.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Long-distance social relationships can both undercut and promote local natural resource management.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Review
- Characteristic processes of human evolution caused the Anthropocene and may obstruct its global solutions.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Review
- Our fragile future under the cumulative cultural evolution of two technologies.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Evolution and sustainability: gathering the strands for an Anthropocene synthesis.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Humans have evolved culturally and perhaps genetically to be unsustainable. We exhibit a deep and consistent pattern of short-term resource exploitation behaviours and institutions. We distinguish agentic and naturally selective forces in cultural evolution. Agentic forces are quite important compared to the blind forces (random variation and natural selection) in cultural evolution and gene-culture coevolution. We need to use the agentic policy-making processes to evade the impact of blind natural selection. We argue that agentic forces became important during our Pleistocene history and into the Anthropocene present. Human creativity in the form of deliberate innovations and the deliberate selective diffusion of technical and social advances drove this process forward for a long time before planetary limits became a serious issue. We review models with multiple positive feedbacks that roughly fit this observed pattern. Policy changes in the case of large-scale existential threats like climate change are made by political and diplomatic agents grasping and moving levers of institutional power in order to avoid the operation of blind natural selection and agentic forces driven by narrow or short-term goals. This article is part of the theme issue 'Evolution and sustainability: gathering the strands for an Anthropocene synthesis'.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.